Environment and Ecology.
World’s rivers are leaking old CO2 into the air
▪ The world’s older carbon has less carbon-14.
▪ By measuring its levels in rivers, researchers have reported how long the carbon has been out
of the atmosphere.
▪ They found that about 60% of the CO2 escaping from rivers came from millennia-old material locked in deep soil.
▪ This ‘leak’ means rivers are returning ancient carbon to the air at a rate similar to the amount
land ecosystems absorb, so carbon-cycle models may have been undercounting losses from
land
